Found at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint/Why_internationalism-_Why_us-_Why_now-.html
Why
internationalism? Why us? Why now?
(The
following article is from
the July 1-31,
2007
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
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From an
address by Stephen Seaborn to
the international solidarity forum at CUPE Ontario's 44th annual
convention in May. Seaborn, a CUPE member since 1979 and VP-Political
Action of CUPE Toronto, is a founding member of the union's National
Committee on International Solidarity.
Why internationalism? Why us? Why now?
Concrete
expressions of
solidarity across borders, by members of our union, began long before
we might think. In the late 1800s Toronto city workers were among the
May Day marchers demonstrating outrage at the brutal repression against
American workers and their demands for an 8-hour day.
Through the
Dirty Thirties, the
members of civic employee unions in Calgary and Toronto and hydro
worker unions in Central Canada were also friends and members of
progressive internationalist movements of the day, including those who
were members of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the Workers
Party and the Communist Party.
Later, our
sisters and brothers
were certainly providing direct support and solidarity in the fight
against Fascism during the Spanish Civil War.
Less than 30
years later, at the
height of the Cold War, CUPE was born through a merger of two very
different unions. A deep-seated ideological divergence between CUPE's
founding unions revealed itself starkly during the union's convention
debates concerning statements of solidarity with workers in foreign
lands facing the imperial interests of international capital.
And we can be
quite certain that
there were members of our founding unions who were at the table when
the peace and nuclear disarmament movement took shape across Canada in
the late 50s.
Our young
union joined with this
country's churches and the growing anti-Apartheid movement in helping
to shape, guide and fund the hugely influential "Banks Divestment
Campaign" of the 1970s and 80s, drawing the explicit link between
Apartheid's impact on South Africa workers and Canadian corporate
interests.
The
under-the-radar role of
successive Canadian governments complicit in the oppression of working
people in Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, Grenada, Nicaragua, Haiti
and Venezuela were each the subject of contentious convention debate
both inside CUPE and within the Canadian Labour Congress.
Not so long
ago, the CLC was
actively dissuading unions from hosting South African healthcare
workers. These workers had been brought to Canada by the ANC and SACTU
primarily because they were (and are today) in an open alliance with
the South African Communist Party. Happily, CUPE healthcare
workers
defied the CLC and hosted the South Africans.
When members
of the US-deposed
popular movements of Grenada, including the Bank and General Workers
Union, toured Canada, the CLC again advised us against meeting with the
delegation. And again CUPE locals sat down and learned first hand of
these workers' struggle in the face of US imperial might. (Note that a
similar face-off is looming this fall as the CLC presses for
anti-boycott union reps to address CUPE's national convention being
held October 14-20 in Toronto.)
In short,
CUPE's internationalist
track record was already pretty firmly established at the membership
and local union level when, at the 1987 National convention, we fought
on the floor to establish a committee of members to ramp up the
visibility and centrality of our union's solidarity with international
struggles.
The National
union's working
committee of members (which was formed in 1989) began to provide
legitimacy to our global solidarity work. CUPE members started to take
note as we initiated a union-to-union solidarity alliance with health,
civic and education workers of our South African sister union, NEHAWU.
In 1990 a healthcare sister from this same South African union
addressed the CUPE Ontario convention and in meetings with union
activists urged us to form an Ontario international committee of
members so as to widen our solidarity work. Nine years later this
committee was established.
Based on our
direct experience
(and in line with the educational focus of the initial 1987 convention
resolution), CUPE's national committee guided our international
solidarity resources into the area of member-to-member and
local-to-local training exchanges. Other agencies in the
non-governmental sector (it was reasoned) specialize in humanitarian
aid and charitable deeds. And more than one Canadian union had already
established Humanitarian Funds which sent members' dues to Third World
community projects. But as public sector workers we in CUPE were unable
to see the effectiveness of NGO development assistance or drought
relief.
We really
wanted our efforts to
be unique and direct. And more importantly, based upon our common
interest as working people. So: we in CUPE would do "solidarity not
charity." We'd deal with working people, not war-relief. We'd engage in
strategic actions not in emergency responses. We'd specialize in social
change, but not in unrelated humanitarian aid. CUPE's outreach would
continue to be both internationalist and reciprocal.
Our
experience as workers through
this last century has put CUPE firmly on the path of membership-based
international relations designed for the sharing of survival strategies
in a rapidly globalized (and privatized) economy and world-wide job
market. By building concrete global alliances between members of the
working class we are learning from each other how to support our
individual and collective struggles, how to maintain and develop
services that respond the needs of the people, not of the profiteers,
and, essentially how best to outwit global capital.